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THE SONG IN THE KINDERGARTEN. 333 
“ Waited patientlee about, 
Lee about. lee about.” 
in order to accommodate words, poor enough in themselves, to worse 
music. Moreover, the good song offers to the child a standard of expres- 
sion in language and music especially valuable while he stands on the 
shreshold of expressive power, and is then permanently impressed by the 
earliest examples brought to his notice. 
The chief and inestimable value of the song lies not, however, in the 
physical or in the intellectual, but in the moral training it affords. The 
song is the uplifting of the spirit. Its effects are as various as the ever- 
changing childish moods. Well and judiciously used, it is a means in the 
hands of the kindergartner of creating moods. Harmful influences may 
be confronted and overcome, good ones strengthened, by the right song in 
the right place, sung as it should be sung. Weariness and irritation are 
changed into a sense of peace by the introduction, without preface or prep- 
aration, of a soothing song without action. Dullness and heaviness may 
be dissipated by an unexpected dash into a stirring bit of music. And 
many are the quietly pointed morals, not too evident, but sinking all the 
leeper because undisturbed by direct allusion, of which the song becomes 
she happy vehicle. 
Music is, as we know, essentially an appeal to feeling, and when we wed 
fitting words to fitting melody, so that between the motive of the one and 
the motive of the other there shall be no discrepancy, we shall have laid a 
lirect avenue of approach to the child’s sympathies, to his better and 
more refined instincts. The road to reverence lies through the feeling, 
and to it the song leads the way. It winds by way of sympathy and 
espect for the lower ferms of life, lifting itself up to a tenderness for the 
auman in life ; and in and through the human it sees and reaches the 
Jivine. Take a song like the following to observe how a child’s reveren- 
tial feeling 1s first stirred : 
i“ The alder by the river shakes out her powdery curls ; 
I'he willow buds in silver for little boys and girls ; 
The little birds fly over, and oh ! how sweet they sing, 
To tell the happy children that once again ’tis spring.” 
When a child shall have learned to feel the sentiment in such a bit of 
musical poetry, and to recognize a loving relationship between himself and 
she alder, the willow buds, and the little birds ; when he shall have begun 
to stretch out in friendly greeting to things and people not himself, he 
will have taken the first step in religion. And as he keeps on singing the 
song again and again, and adds others of the same uplifting tendency, 
with music that also elevates, the sentiment of reverence deepens and 
widens until, by and by, it embraces all that he can know of what is true 
and good and beautiful.